by Doug Carroll and Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY

by Doug Carroll and Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY

JPMorgan Chase shares closed down nearly 4% in Friday trading after the nation's largest bank missed Wall Street estimates by reporting first quarter earnings of $5.3 billion, a 19% drop from a year ago.

The New York-based bank's shares ended the trading day at $55.30, a nearly 3.7% drop.

JPMorgan reported the bank earned $1.28 a share compared with $1.59 a year ago. Wall Street's consensus estimate was $1.40 a share, according to a FactSet survey of analysts.

Revenue fell 8% from last year's first quarter to $23.9 billion.

A falloff in trading revenue was the main contributor to the weaker results. Fixed income revenue of $3.8 billion was down 21% from a year earlier.

But there were declines in other segments of the bank's business, too. In consumer and community banking, net revenue fell $1.2 billion, or 10%, to $10.5 billion. Mortgage loan originations of $17 billion fell 68% from 2013's first quarter and 27% from last year's fourth quarter.

"Clearly this was not the usual upside surprise for JPM," said Jeff Morris, head of U.S. equities at asset manager Standard Life Investments. "They missed expectations by 10 cents per share due to weakness in revenue."

Banking analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a Friday note that JPMorgan's mortgage banking results were "lower than expected with volumes and gain-on-sale margins being weaker."

In other financial results, JPMorgan said it set aside $850 million for credit losses, up from $617 million a year earlier.

After paying billions in fines and legal settlements over the past year, JPMorgan has been cutting expenses. Since last year's first quarter, it has cut its employee headcount by 8,904 to 246,994.

Bank executives told Wall Street analysts in a conference call that litigation issues and costs would continue, though less regularly and at somewhat lower levels.

"It's not going to affect the underlying business," said CEO Jamie Dimon, who added that the legal settlements similarly had not appeared to harm the bank's reputation.

"Clients vote with their feet, and they seem to be coming to our bankers and our branches," he said.

The bank recently announced it will increase the second quarter dividend from 38 cents a share to 40 cents a share. It is also buying back $6.5 billion of stock through next year's first quarter.